Your Right to Know

Gov. John Kasich signaled yesterday
that he would rather see welfare recipients who are on drugs get help for the addiction than have
their public benefits pulled. His stance appears to buck Republicans in Ohio and other states
seeking to tie benefits to one’s ability to pass a drug test.

“There are a lot of people hurting out there, and so I’m not sure this is the time to start
saying to them, ‘If you want to get something, you’ve got to go through these hoops,’ ” Kasich
said, responding to a question from the audience after his speech in Columbus to a conference of
Ohio county commissioners and engineers.

This is the second instance in a short span in which Kasich has either halted or reversed
momentum that his Department of Job and Family Services was building on studying or implementing a
policy.

Last month, Kasich ordered the department to dump a policy that was adopted by the previous
administration last year to recoup the overpayment of welfare benefits beyond 10 years. Instead,
Kasich ordered a return to the past practice of retrieving only overpayments made in the previous
10 years. Kasich also might seek to change state policy to stop the practice of recouping overpaid
benefits that were doled out through government error.

In October,
The Dispatch reported that the Kasich administration was studying tying eligibility for
unemployment benefits to a person’s ability to pass a drug test, in response to bills being
introduced in Ohio and other states.

Republican Sen. Tim Schaffer of Lancaster introduced a bill in February to require adults who
apply for need-based assistance — cash, medical, food, housing or energy — to submit to a drug
test. In August, then-Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, a Republican who has since been appointed a judge
in Geauga County, said he was going to propose a similar bill.

Similar legislation that was passed in Florida and signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott this
year was placed on hold in October by a federal judge pending resolution of a lawsuit that contends
such a law violates Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure without cause.

On tying welfare benefits to drug tests, Kasich listed a host of reasons to pause, including
considering the children of parents who fail drug tests, sending people who fail tests to rehab,
and privacy laws that could prevent the tests.

“You’ve got to balance the taxpayers off about what’s the common-sense thing to do with the
right thing to do, the compassionate thing to do,” Kasich said. “What’s the right thing for the
kids?”

Jack Frech, the director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services and a critic
of the idea of tying unemployment benefits to drug tests, complimented Kasich yesterday.

“We have a drug problem out there, but it’s certainly not one that just affects the unemployed
or people who are on welfare,” Frech said. “I’m glad the governor has changed his mind about this.
These folks don’t have enough money to live on in the first place. That’s a much-bigger
problem."

Speaking specifically about tying unemployment benefits to drug tests, Kasich said: “What I
would prefer to do is give them 30 days to get clean, but employers don’t want to tell us who’s
passing and who’s not.

“Here’s what I do know: Let’s first of all work on the low-hanging fruit,” the Republican
governor said. “Let’s talk about people who lose their jobs who need to start very quickly into
training. Because the longer a person is out of work, the more unemployable they become.”

The governor is developing a system to more quickly train people for the jobs that exist in
Ohio, citing more than 70,000 vacancies today. He wants one-stop training, and unemployment centers
run by counties to be more responsive.

Kasich said he hadn’t seen Schaffer’s bill but asked the senator to discuss it with him.
Schaffer could not be reached for comment.